GOP majority resists calls for swift action on Texas’ school funding

AUSTIN — Democratic lawmakers and virtually all public education groups want swift action to address Thursday’s court ruling that overturned the Texas school finance system. But the GOP majority in the Legislature insists it will not respond until the state’s highest court weighs in.

That means lawmakers probably won’t take any significant action to add money to school budgets in their 2015 session. But GOP leaders appear willing to consider changes on other issues that contributed to the ruling by District Judge John Dietz of Austin, such as further easing student testing requirements.

Dietz, ruling in a lawsuit brought by more than 600 school districts, declared the funding system unconstitutional. The judge determined that schools don’t have enough money to properly educate all students. In addition, he said, funding is distributed unfairly, and districts are improperly restrained from raising the revenue they need.

Senate Education Committee Chairman Dan Patrick, R-Houston, reflected the feelings of many GOP lawmakers when he pointed out that the court ruling is the opinion of one man, a Democratic Travis County judge.

“The final say will come from the Supreme Court,” said Patrick, the Republican nominee and front-runner for lieutenant governor this year.

Attorney General Greg Abbott, the GOP nominee for governor, has promised that the decision will be appealed. Abbott showed his disapproval of Dietz’s handling of the case when he tried to get him removed as judge earlier this summer.

Dietz didn’t say how much more money the state needed to spend to ensure adequate and equal education opportunities, as the state Constitution requires. But his critiques of the system suggest billions in new spending, and with conservatives expected to gain ground in the House and Senate, there’s little appetite for that among majority Republicans.

Still, there were indications that some are willing to consider lesser fixes that would respond to several of Dietz’s findings.

Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, said he will offer legislation that would give districts more flexibility in meeting state requirements and eases student testing.

His aim, he said, is to “reduce the high-stakes testing burden on teachers and students.”

House Public Education Committee Chairman Jimmie Don Aycock, R-Killeen, has appointed an informal working group of House members to study school finance and look for possible improvements.

Aycock, who could not be reached for comment on the Dietz ruling, is a former Killeen school board member who is generally viewed by school districts as an ally on education issues.

Rep. Jason Villalba, R-Dallas, is another Republican who would like to see the Legislature work on school finance in the 2015 session.

“While I fundamentally disagree with Judge Dietz’s reasoning and have confidence that Attorney General Abbott will prevail on appeal, it is clear to me that the Legislature must act boldly and decisively in the next legislative session to address this critically important issue once and for all,” he said.

Democrats are also pushing for such sweeping action.

“Texas’ school finance system is woefully out of date and everyone in the Capitol knows it,” said Senate Democratic Caucus Chairman Kirk Watson of Austin. “Do we really want to relegate our schoolchildren to an unconstitutional public education system for another two years?”

Dallas Superintendent Mike Miles reflected the viewpoint of most superintendents in urging legislative action now and not waiting until the Supreme Court rules — a decision that probably won’t come before the 2015 session ends.

He pointed to his district’s efforts to close the long-standing achievement gap between economically disadvantaged students and their peers from higher-income families. “The time is now for lawmakers to provide the resources necessary to support (our) work,” he said.

In his 21-page judgment and an accompanying 364-pages of fact-finding, Dietz described in detail the failings of the state in educating low-income and limited-English students.

“A wide variety of measures show that the performance of economically disadvantaged students and [limited English] students is dismal, and the gaps between these students and their peers have grown,” the judge said, noting that 3 in 5 Texas students are now considered economically disadvantaged. Nearly 1 in 5 has limited English skills.

Dietz also said that overall performance on student achievement tests has been “flat” and “hundreds of thousands of students are not on track to graduate.”

In reaching his conclusions, the judge said he looked at STAAR tests, end-of-course exams, SAT and ACT results, graduation rates and dropout rates.

“The failure rates on STAAR constitute a current crisis in the educational system,” he said. “Student performance data from the STAAR exam, as well as other testing data, reveal that Texas is far from accomplishing its mission of producing college and career-ready graduates.”

Dietz also laid out his analysis of how school funding has actually declined in Texas over the past decade — a sharp contrast to the claims of Gov. Rick Perry and others who say that funding of schools has jumped sharply during the period.

In 2004, he wrote, Texas spent $7,128 per student. Adjusting for inflation, he said, it’s $6,816 in 2004 dollars this school year, “even though Texas’ student population has become more challenging to educate and the bar for student performance has been raised substantially since that time.”

The judge also highlighted the “large gaps” in funding between high- and low-property-wealth districts, which he said violate a constitutional requirement that “children who live in poor districts and children who live in rich districts” be treated equally in funding their education.

That difference can be as much as $1,000 per student, which he noted translates into an advantage of $22,000 per typical elementary classroom and $400,000 for a campus of 400 pupils.

The lawsuit by school districts was triggered by massive funding reductions the Legislature approved in 2011. That forced elimination of 11,000 teaching jobs and increased class sizes at thousands of campuses across Texas. Many school districts, including Dallas, still received less funding per student this year than they did before the 2011 cuts.

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